Introduction. Observations reveal that, seconds after the Big Bang, the universe was described by a highly ordered state: a spatially-flat radiation-dominated FRW metric (plus tiny gaussian, adiabatic, purely-growing-mode scalar perturbations described by a nearly-scale-invariant power spectrum) [1]}. What is this profound clue trying to tell us? The conventional interpretation is that the radiation dominated era was preceded by an earlier hypothetical epoch of accelerated expansion called inflation. However, for every property of the universe that inflation claims to explain or predict, there are numerous published inflationary models that claim to explain or predict the opposite. We worry that inflation may not be a “good explanation" in the sense articulated in Ch. 1 of [2]}, and hope to find an alternative explanation that is harder to vary.
